Durian: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Crass

It befudles your senses in a way that no rambutan or mango can. Touching its spikes send shivers down my arms. My local friend smiles wryly at me, knowing that I will be having the time of my life. He took the lead and made it ooze with his bare hands. Opening the fruit hits me with its infamous olfactory assault, torturing my brain into hitting overdrive. It over-processes the late afternoon humidity, the rustling palm fronds nearby, the escalating ululating voice of the imam's call to prayer, the passing carabao and the two ice-cold bottles of cola to down the yellow meat with. I learned that the fruit is best eaten with a swig of coke so that it takes out the sappy, sticky feeling in your mouth.

Durian engages—you eat it but it also eats you. There is no grey area, you either go gaga over it, or banish it to the bowels of the earth. I hesitate, but my friend prods me on to take my virgin bite. He says if I can take a bite of this fruit, I could dive into the foulest-smelling things of the world. I wondered what he was pertaining to. As I bit into the meaty abomination, my eyes brighten, and remember the fruit of Eden and how it opened minds. This might be how it tasted. It is non-pareil in its aromatic embrace—you eat it but it drowns you with it. I tasted and my eyes opened to good and evil.

Durian lovers, I am philosophically told, are givers, you cannot deny the presence of the fruit to your friends (or foes beyond the next city block for that matter.) It cries for your attention and is as unapologetic as it can get, in the same way that this place is. With its blazing heat, vigilante death squads, its Palinesque mayor, its authoritarian anti-smoking drive, its beaches and mountains, its rivers and fruit plantations... all within the city limits of Davao.

I understood the city for what its famous local Durian specie stood for: beautiful, warts or should I say, stench, and all. With that thought, I took a huge bite and drowned the stink with my soda.